State works to take dead voters off list

Thursday, May 18, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Although no one is ready to start calling Nevada "Chicago West," the names of hundreds of dead people remain on voter registration lists throughout the state.

And thousands more Nevadans are registered in two places, potentially allowing them to cast - illegally - more than one ballot.

A statewide voter registration system being developed by Secretary of State Dean Heller's office shows that, as of Jan. 1, 2,840 dead people were still registered to vote in Nevada. In addition, more than 12,000 people were registered to vote in two counties, a number that has been reduced by three-quarters over the past five months.

Heller said he had not received any indication from county clerks or registrars of voters that dead voters' names had been used to cast ballots improperly. Similarly, there is no evidence that people with dual registrations had voted more than once in the same election.

Under the Federal Voting Act, each state must develop a statewide registration system for this year's election.

In Nevada, counties have handled voter registration. Each night, the counties send their voter registrations to a state computer, where they are checked against records in the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Division of Vital Statistics.

Counties are notified when the record searches turn up cases where a dead person is still registered or an individual is registered in two counties. And the counties have been taking action to verify and eliminate the problem.

In Clark County, the state check showed 1,327 deceased persons still were registered to vote as of Jan. 1. Since then, Clark County has reduced that number to 900.

Larry Lomax, voter registrar in Clark County, said his office was working to eliminate all names of deceased voters.

"We need additional information to be confident that the dead person is the same one as on the rolls," he said. "You don't want to remove the wrong person."

Before the new voter system was started, Lomax said, his office relied on reports from the Clark County coroner's office to strike the dead from voter lists.

In Washoe County, the names of 1,115 dead persons remain on registration lists.

Voter Registrar Dan Burk said he has hired two temporary workers to ensure that the dead person in question is the same person still registered to vote.

Burk, whose office in the past had one employee check newspaper obituaries daily, also receives a monthly report from the state Office of Vital Statistics on deaths. But those methods, he noted, would not necessarily produce the names of individuals who died out of state.

The new statewide registration system also has helped counties reduce the number of voters registered in two places. As of this week, there still were 3,118 people who had signed up in two locations, down nearly 9,000 from the first of the year.

Clark County cut its number of du al registered voters from 4,361 to 1,451, Heller's report shows.

When people move, they usually do not inform their former county election department. But Heller does not believe that such voters use their new address to try to cast more than one vote. "There is not voter fraud," he said.

A question on voter registration forms asks the individual whether he is registered in another county. But Lomax said individuals are not required to fill out the answer.

If, however, the voter does answer, Lomax said, his office notifies the county where the voter was formerly registered.

Both Lomax and Burk praised the secretary of state's new system.

"It's doing pretty well," Lomax said, adding that it has put the county "light years ahead" of Covansys, the firm initially hired by Heller to install a new voter registration system.

After numerous complaints from the counties about Covansys, Heller fired the company and turned the case over to the state attorney general's office in an effort to get the company to repay the $1.2 million it received from the state.

If the company refuses, there will be legal action, Heller said.

Covansys has since sold its state and local government operations to Saber Consulting, a provider of software services.